Willow's Random Thoughts

Category Archives: Cats

I have three cats. Two of them, Munkie! and Boris, are deathly afraid of the vacuum. Natasha doesn’t like to get to close to it, but she’ll stay in the room and watch you, and scamper to someplace else when you start getting near to her.

So I get the vacuum out of the closet, and start getting ready to vacuum- uncurling the cord, plugging it in, etc. Boris and Munkie! are watching from opposite sides of the room.

I turn it on. Immediately, they both run towards the basement door. We have a catflap in that door.

BAM! They collide right in front of it. For a moment, they’re on the floor, stunned and wondering what’s happening. Then they recover, and get in the catflap and down those stairs.

Once upon a time, on the internet, there were the greatest cats we will ever know. We cannot look upon them as they were, but we can understand them as memes are added to them, melting like a snowflake in the sun.
For those cats are gone now, destroyed as the internet destroys all beautiful things. All that remains are those which we call pictures, moments frozen from the flow of time.

This Is No Longer a Cat, This Is Not Yet a Lol.
This is all that remains. Whatever else is what you make of it.

At It Was…

Once upon a time, before the cheeseburgers, before invisible objects, before monorails, before ceiling cat watching you masturbate, there was a great network. Built of ones and zeroes and full of imagination and pictures and text, it was home to pictures of cats whos splendor we are not given to understand. Free of captions, they lived a life of bliss, eating cat treats, warming themselves in the sun, and beloved by all. The named their network the internet, for it connected the world.

The cats in that age did not yet measure time, for they did know memes. Who can say how long it lasted? Perhaps it was merely a moment, fading away as the sunbeams flashed into a monitor, passing as it was even born. Perhaps it was forever until it ended. Does it matter, or is the thing the picture that lingers?

Their King…
Amongst them, there was a cat, and yet, above them, he was their king. Pure of snow in his hide, happy in his heart, and long in his stature, his grace and cuteness was admired by all the people. And so it was natural that they named him Longcat, for he ruled over them, as the internet cradled the world.

And So It Came to Pass…
Could that night have been forever? Was it some error, or some choice, that summoned a caption into their history? Were posters lax, or failing, or unlucky in some way? Or was it merely the turning of the internet?
We cannot know why it came, or what could have been if it had not. We can only know that the sightings began with the anime fans. One and one they saw it, only fleeting and irregular, that website coming up at the edge of the internet, impossible and alien. They spoke of it, they wrote of it, they posted to it, they drew on it and sung its cacophonies on it. At first it was thought to be madness, that particular sort of madness that strikes the worst of them. But if it was madness, it spread, for more people saw, and more, and by the time it reached the highest, Longcat himself, it had already been given a name. Because it was new, they called it beautiful. Because it was new, they called it 4-Chan.
They saw Longcat then, and the 4-Channers cried over his length. And so it was that they called for a means that Longcat’s length could be measured, and construction of a great Photoshop, that they might increase his length. The thrummings and clicking clackings of the Photoshop filled the internet, and Longcat’s length was lengthened, and for the first time, the inhabitants of the internet knew a cat picture that was shopped. But they could not tell because of the pixels, because they had yet to have seen a number of shops in their time.

The /b/
By light of the internet, the /b/ festers like a neglected miscarriage, giving witness to the arrogance of the past just as the memes it spawns give the promise of dooms to the future.
Many stories are told about the /b/, its nature, its origins, and its history. Some say it has always been there- that the time of captionless cat pictures is simply a myth for cat fanciers. Others say it is not there at all, that it is only an illusion created by the worst in all of us. But most say that it was done, and that it was posted by people, and that we must take the blame for our own doom.
No one knows the truth, but they know that before the /b/, the internet was perfect, the cat pictures had no captions, and the people knew no memes, and now the people have learned lolcats, domo-kun, Bridget, and ten thousand other ravages of 4-Chan.
Such knowledge cannot be born without some excuse, some meaning, some explanation. And so the posters have made their own stories of how it came to pass.

Longcat and Tacgnol
The greatest of the demons of /b/ is not a caption at all, but a cat: Tacgnol.
Only rarely ever sighted, Tacgnol is the greatest general amongst the emocats, and greatly respected amongst their kind. He is one of the cats, but black as midnight, and long, long as Longcat.
Some amongst the cat fanciers say that Tacgnol is Longcat, turned by /b/ cruel irony and Photoshop’s filter into a mockery of himself. If you listen to the stories, or look at the pixels, this makes sense. But the truth is not that simple.
The oldest, weariest, and wisest amongst the cat fanciers- those that are near to giving up on the internet- know the truth. Tacgnol is every cat, who, attempting to win the internet with cuteness and lols, has put captions on its picture, turning to the lolcats with a corrupted and blackened heart. Tacgnol is terrible because he is mighty, yes, but he is even more terrible because he is the future of every lolcat that does not win the internet. They are most terrible, because when you think about the meme, you know that once, a forgotten age ago, they meant well.

Its been a while since I posted- the new job has kept me extremely busy.

Anyway, Tim and I are moving in together later this month, and I’ve gradually started moving things over one box of stuff at a time. So the last box was a litter box- and my kitty cat, Munkie!

For a couple of days, Munkie! has been feeling out Tim’s house, and has had some chaperoned encounters with Boris and Natasha. But now my place is kitty-less. And it makes me sad. I hope my Munkie! doesn’t think I’m abandoning her. I miss her so much!

Someone called Crazylady has chosen This Way Lies Madness as one of her favored links. I have no idea who this person is, but she likes cats and her blog is kind of wierd, so I thought I’d call attention to her blog. That is all.

Edit: I seem to have misread the url, since Crazylady doesn’t exist anymore. Or she deleted her blog. Or I’m just going nuts.

My doctor’s prescribed a sleep-aid for me. The prescription is for a pill every day, but he advised me to take a half-pill until I know how it will affect me. I forgot and took a whole pill before going to bed.

I work up at 4:30 (PM, I work third shift), still completely tired and now with a headache (one of the side effects of the meds.) I wanted to go back to bed more than anything in the world, but I couldn’t because Munkie! needed to be picked up from the vet.

(She was hiding from me all day Friday and most of the day Saturday, but came out to play around 8 pm or so. She loves me!)

I was taking 2 Ibuprofin every 4 hours to try and get through the pain, which faded as the day went on, but never really went away. I was super tired (maybe I should have stayed home to nap instead of going to play Mountain Witch with Tim, Len, and Clyde, but it was a fun session, so I have no regrets), and SO out of it at work. Also late for work, because I had to stop for gas and antifreeze, and the clerk took forever.

I didn’t take any medication before going to bed Saturday. I slept pretty good, but I had a card tournament to get to, so I only got 7 hours of sleep (and the tournament didn’t even happen because of poor turnout and fate conspiring against some of our regulars.) So I got to go home and nap.

I don’t have anything going on Sunday, so I’ll take a half-pill and set no alarm, and see how long that makes me sleep.

You know those people who completely dote over their animals and identify with them on a really weird m(p)aternal level (its usually women, but I know at least two men who do this). They say things like, “Oh Munkie!, come out an meet your mama’s friends,” and stuff like that.

I’ve become one of those people. I always thought that they were way, way, off the deep end, and incredibly pathetic that they equated pet ownership with parenthood. But as a first time pet owner (I’ve had pets as a kid, and family pets, but this is different! She’s *my* baby!) I have totally succumbed to this. I didn’t think I was going to, but it’s snuck up on me, you know? I also write about my cat on my blog, and sometimes when I’m at work or outside and I’m just thinking about my cat- she’s not even there or anything- I’ll get really happy and say her name out loud. (This is usually followed by feeling really stupid and looking around to see if anyone heard me.)

Anyway, I’ve gotten Munkie! to be willing to go inside the kitty carrier: catnip did the trick, and she hung out in there for a little while. Hopefully I can get her accomodated to it, and then have an easier vet time (and a fun kitty hidey-hole.)

Ok, a happy kitty post after yesterday’s sad kitty post. Munkie! is once again bothering me in my sleep, which is so adorable.

I got some supplies today, and took apart the cat carrier and cleaned it so it doesn’t smell like pee. (I wouldn’t want to be locked in a cubicle that reeked of pee, so I can’t really blame her.) I got her a scratching post, which she sniffed, rubbed against, and then went back to scratching the walls. And I got her catnip, which made her go absolutely nuts. She was willing to eat it out of the taken-apart cat carrier, so that’s a start.

Munkie! was supposed to get spayed today. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get her into the kitty-carrier and over to the vet, so we had to cancel and reschedule for next week.

I feel like I tried too hard to get her in and scared her. I was able to get her out from under the bed by tossing some string around, but later even that didn’t work. So I resigned in defeat. Usually when I’m sleeping, Munkie! tries to snuggle with me or clean out my ears with her tounge. Last night she didn’t; I think she was mad at me 😦

I’m sad because I was just trying to help my kitty, and I love her to bits, and I made her scared. I feel like I failed, and if she goes into heat in the next week and gets cervical cancer (or whatever) and dies, it’ll be my fault. I’m probably blowing things out of proportion, but I just want my kitty to be happy.

Munkie! was shy at first and hid somewhere. After we came back, she was willing to come out, and was her normal playful self.

The waitress at the Olive Garden (which is overpriced) thought my L5R t-shirt had some famous work of art. I tried to explain that it was from a card game, but she said her grandmother had some art that looked just like it. I thought that was pretty funny. Who knew I had class?